


A Family in the Flood

by ProfessorDrarry



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Dreams and Nightmares, F/M, Minor references to past torture, Song Lyrics, floods
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-26
Updated: 2018-09-26
Packaged: 2019-07-17 16:50:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,574
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16099781
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ProfessorDrarry/pseuds/ProfessorDrarry
Summary: We're a family pulled from the floodYou tore the floorboards upAnd let the river rush inNot wash away, wash awayWe were reaching in the darkThat summer in New YorkAnd it was so far to fall?





	A Family in the Flood

**Author's Note:**

> Written for Sing-Me-A-Rare Vol.2. Much love to my Beta who shall remain nameless for the moment.  
> Song Prompt - End of Love, Florence+The Machine

* * *

The acrid smell of burnt wood hung in the air, making her eyes water as she trudged along the empty road. Nothing. Everything was reduced to nothing. There was smoke and water in the same street, confusing the senses and trapping her in her thoughts. Tiny piles of rubble littered the path. The moment she’d died this time, she'd heard one cry. One scream into the oblivion. Then silence.

"I should have loved you better," she said out loud now. Why ever not? There was nothing left to hear her.

"Perhaps not better, but differently?"

His voice pulled her back to the surface for the moment, made the orange sun brighter through the haze, drove the ghosts back slightly so that the music that played on tinny repeat was louder, happier. If only for a moment. His voice had always been this for her; she clung to it in desperation and pulled herself back to the earth.

"It still would not have mattered," she said sadly, turning in a wide circle until she found his face.

"Maybe not to them, you're right," he conceded. "But to him?" He stepped up to her and placed his arm gently on her shoulders. She desperately tried not to flinch at the touch.

"It may have made a difference to _him_ ," he concluded, watching a stray cat chase an unseen foe across the road. A cat. The world was already mending; it always happened so fast. Likely, she realised, because she constructed it again right after each flood. The power did not make her feel more at ease. What use was it to be able to create if you also caused the destruction?

"I've been looking for you," he teased. "Bad morning I see. I should have started here."

"Don't joke," she pouted. "It'll stay this way one day."

He took her elbow gently and gazed at the broken-down buildings and the ashes that littered the ground. There were cracks in everything, the residual heat causing faults in places that normally stayed stalwart even in the worst of storms. Power lines were down, their posts smouldering blackness on the ground. He kissed her temple and sighed.

"Perhaps one day," he admitted. "But not today. Come, my darling. Let's have the forest back, hmm?"

His voice was honeyed and sincere, full of admiration that she did not deserve. He had loved her from that very first moment. Loved her in all she was, for all her terrible potential.

It was the only thing that kept them here. She exhaled and the ground melted out from below their feet. Slowly, the scene before them shifted. The rubble was replaced with lush foliage, a deep, damp, earthy smell, with flowers all around the meadow.

"That's my girl," he praised. "Straight to the clearing I go. Smells so much better out here. Won't you come rest a while?"

"How can you rest?" she cried. "He'll be here soon."

"Yes, he will," he acknowledged, releasing her arm and walking away to the little blanket on the grass. "But the plan is a good one. I can feel it. He'll hear us this time. What sense is there in worrying?"

She smiled a small smile. He was right, of course. Right and also comforting.

"There isn't any," she admitted, "but since when has that ever stopped me?”

He laughed heartily and patted the spot beside him, beckoning her to his side.

* * *

 Neville was driving a Muggle car; it was actually _his_ Muggle car, much to his grandmother’s eternal dismay. It was the second one he’d purchased after the broken down and rattly old thing he’d bought right out of his Herbology training had finally died. He was the only of his friends who drove, and none of them really understood it either. He told them it was because it was a safer way to transport delicate flower buds and tiny saplings from place to place than any of the magical options available. It was a good excuse.

It just wasn’t true.

The reason he had learned to drive, the reason he did it still, was for these moments.

He cracked his neck and rolled his shoulders as he pulled off the A4 and up to the building he’d been visiting for as long as he could remember. The doors were even the same colour, a faded sort of sage that may have once been comforting but now just made him sad. When swung inward on their creaky hinges, they led straight inside the special ward of the hospital. He wasn’t sure if there was some reason for this strange backdoor style entrance, or if it was just the way the building had been organised, but it was depressing either way.

These visits were why he drove. He preferred to come through the door, like a civilized human who was just normally visiting his parents. He preferred to have time to think and prepare, to organise his thoughts before his afternoon of tedium.

He expertly parked and took a deep breath before dragging himself into the building.

“Hello, Mr Longbottom,” a cheery voice said from behind him.

“Hello, Marigold,” he replied, keeping himself light and warm. Marigold was one of the good ones. He was happy to see her on shift today. “Any change?” he asked lightly.

She smiled sadly and shook her head. “Oh, wait,” she corrected, a grin spreading across her face. “Not true. Mum’s song has changed again.”

“Oh,” Neville muttered, smiling as he walked past her. “Thanks, Marigold.”

She patted his shoulder as he passed and he smiled brighter. She really did her best; it wasn’t her fault that nothing ever improved..

Precisely one hour later, he got back in the car, drove forty-five minutes in the sheer darkness of the winter night, climbed the stairs to his flat, and took a moment to rest his forehead on the door before pushing it open. He undressed quietly without switching on a light and climbed into his already warm bed.

Curling gratefully around her sleeping form, Neville resisted the urge to wake Luna. He’d had to stop her from coming with him on the hospital visits early on in their relationship. It wasn’t that she wasn’t strong enough, it was more a problem of compassion. She loved him and therefore, she wanted his happiness, which was nearly impossible for the hour that he spent with his parents each week.

He slumped into the covers happily before jolting back awake and practically leaping out of bed. Reaching into the hamper to retrieve the trousers he’d been wearing, he pulled the bright orange wrapper from his pocket, still folded in its usual intricate pattern. He reverently carried it to the cigar box on his dresser, cringing at the squeaky hinge, and dropped the paper inside. It fluttered down on top of the others, a colourful, reverse confetti that Neville hated looking at, yet could not relinquish.

Sleep took him quickly once he returned to bed, the weariness of a long, grey day coming to a silent close; as always, he dreamed of floods.

* * *

 He found her this time at the flooded castle. He was surprised. She didn’t often come here.

“Alice?” he whispered gently. She startled and turned to look at him. There was a devastating half-second of confusion before recognition found her crinkled, sunken eyes. His suspicions were confirmed; she was getting worse. They were running out of time.

“We were a family,” she replied enigmatically.

“We still _are_ ,” Frank said with a smile. “He still comes all the time, doesn’t he? Did you give him the last one?”

She frowned, brow furrowed in deep thought. “I think… I think so,” she concluded. “I can’t be sure. But I think so.”

“Then let’s go have some lunch, shall we?” He coaxed her forward.

“Didn’t we just eat lunch?” she replied suspiciously.

“Perhaps. I’ve made pear tarts,” he said with a shrug. What did it matter how many times a day they ate lunch in this place?

She smiled, but the expression was brief, fleeting. She turned back to the half-submerged tower. “Do you think he knows he does this?” she asked him, her voice wobbling in a bare whisper.

“It makes me nervous that perhaps he does. Perhaps… perhaps he means to,” Frank admitted slowly. “He fights your fire with his floods. He keeps us safe.”

Sometimes, he knew he protected her too much. Tried to keep things from her, carried too much weight with the assumption that he could handle it. Frank had no idea why he felt the need to keep her safe, except that he’d been doing it for so long. It wasn’t necessary; she was, even now, stronger than he was. She always had been.

That day, many years ago now, _He_ had known that too. There had been much more time spent on her that night; breaking her down, collapsing the will of the strongest person he had ever met. The moment that string had finally broken, the moment they had ended up here, the sound of it had been a tangible, audible thing.

That sound haunted his dreams, left him reaching in the dark. For her. For the truth. For their freedom. And so he hid things from her, protected her with small secrets and easy smiles.

“Pear tarts?” she replied hopefully.

He nodded and led the way back to their small clearing.

* * *

 Neville slept through his alarm. Most days, he didn’t even bother setting the infernal thing; the advantage of being self-employed was that it didn’t really matter to his customers what time he turned up. The few that did make appointments never fussed much about his irregular hours, once he had made it clear that he had exactly what they needed, no matter how rare or expensive.

The problem this morning, however, was that this wasn’t an appointment with an over-enthusiastic botanist or a palace gardener. This was his scheduled hearing for the release of the official documents that would finally tell him what had really happened that night his parents had been ripped from him in every way that mattered. Difficult decisions were to be made for him today. He couldn’t afford to be late. Regardless, he didn’t wake until the third ring, groggy and confused for a moment.

“Shit!” he shouted as realisation dawned. The commotion, obviously, woke Luna. “Shit, fucking, _of course_ , shit,” he grumbled as he fumbled around in the semi-darkness of the bedroom.

“Neville,” Luna soothed. “Calm, my love. You still have lots of time.”

“Yes, but I was supposed to –”

“I put the folder in your car last night.”

“Well... thank you, but –”

“And I told Blaise you would be meeting him at the visitor’s entrance at nine.”

“Well, but–”

“I also ordered your breakfast and tea. It’ll be there when you arrive. Blaise is going to show you down and then go meet the archivist to make sure everything is in order. The meeting doesn’t start until 9:35,” Luna finished, laying back down with a yawn.

Neville sat heavily on the side of the bed. “Trial,” he insisted meekly.

“ _Meeting_ ,” Luna contradicted. “Do you want me to come with you? I don’t mind.”

He smiled weakly and leaned down to kiss her on the top of the head. “Where would I be without you, my Lu Lovely.”

“Even more famous and successful,” she replied. “But stressed and with a head full of Wrackspurts. I’ll get up in a moment, once you’ve calmed down. I can at least come and sit in the corridor.”

She winked at him and continued to lounge, watching him move around the room with a dreamy smile that relaxed him just with its existence. He found that she had also laid out his suit and his tie. The formal robes he was to throw on were on top of those of it all. He had calmed significantly by the time he went to get socks from his drawer. 

And promptly knocked the ancient cigar box to the floor, where it shattered into three splinters of wood and sent dozens of colourful waxed papers to several dark corners beneath the furniture.

“Of course,” he groaned. “Why  _bloody_ not.”

“It’s okay, Nev,” Luna said, standing and moving behind him, already picking up the pieces. “We’ve got it. We’ll find them all. _Reparo_.”

The edges of the box sprang together, and Neville stared at the ultramarine Droobles wrapper he’d caught in mid-air as it had fluttered to the floor.

_That summer in New York,_ it read.

“Luna…” he murmured hesitantly. “Luna, how many of these have something written on them?

He was tearing at the floorboards when she arrived in the attic. She shuddered as the darkness collapsed around her. She hated it here. They both did. Why would you choose to be inside a gloomy, broken-down farmhouse when you could sleep outside without feeling the rain or cold? When you could stare up every night at the stars and wonder if they were real? They had spent the first nights here, out of habit. Hidden what few things they had, what small tokens they had both managed to hold onto in those last moments. From that point on, they rarely came inside. It was a reminder of how much time had past.

Outside, the seasons of the trees were random; one day, it was the height of summer and the next, all the leaves had fallen. They had long ago given up trying to track it and so neither were really aware of the months or the years. Inside though, there were markers. Cobwebs that grew thick on the stairs. Streaks of ever-ageing grime. The yellowing of terrible, distorted landscape photographs in their frames. She shuddered as she climbed the broken attic steps.

“Frank?” she called into the gloom. She’d never been able to figure out how they knew where the other was at all times, but she always felt the familiar tug in her navel and followed the feeling to him every time.

“Frank?” she tried again.

He appeared at the door with dust in his hair and a mad grin on his face.

“He’s read one, Alice,” he burst out excitedly. “It’s time!”

“Frank…”

“No,” he replied stubbornly. “It’s time. Get your things.”

“We don’t know that he’ll figure it out, darling,” she replied patiently.

“We do. He will,” Frank insisted. “He’s Neville.”

She opened her mouth to respond, to try and convince him to be patient, relax. Don’t get your hopes up, she wanted to say. We’ve felt close before, remember?

He’d have ignored her anyway, but as it was she didn’t get out a single word before the strong rush of ocean waves roared at the windows, before the darkness engulfed them and the cold water flooded the house, instantly engulfing the second floor and sweeping them lower and lower. She tugged her shirt down, held tight to his hand, and waited for the moment to pass.

In the end, Neville was late to the Ministry; all told, fifteen of the papers had words scribbled on them in a small, neat and slanted script that he knew very, very well.

He didn’t know it because he’d grown up with those letters scrawled on notes inside his lunchbox. He didn’t recognize them from words written hastily to explain that he had permission to go to Hogsmeade, or Howlers sent when he’d made mistakes at schools. He didn’t know the letters as he would have, because his mother’s writing had been ripped from his grasp before he even knew what a letter was.

Instead, he had been forced to become familiar with her writing through letters smuggled from his grandmother’s home; love letters and missives and scribbled notes about places she wanted to visit. Grocery lists and essays secreted away in an old box beneath her dresser. He’d found it once when he was ten, and had spent every summer since finding a way to sneak it out for an hour or two while his grandmother slept. He knew every word she had ever written.

Or at least, he thought he had.

These phrases, though, they were new. It only took he and Luna five minutes to sort out that there were four phrases, repeated over and over, and that they could only be arranged in so many ways. Regardless of how you placed the phrases together, the meaning didn’t change; or at least, it never really began to make sense.

_Ask Grandmother_

_Balcony_

_Summer in New York_

_EVEN IN DREAMING_

“Even in dreaming?” Luna said again, turning the phrases over and over in the spinning, Ravenclaw brain of hers that he knew well. “Always like that. In capitals. Like it’s more important?”

“I know,” Neville said again. They’d been talking like this for the whole five minutes they’d been sitting in the atrium of the Ministry, awaiting admittance. “Plus, they’ve definitely never been to America.”

“New York, though,” Luna said, tapping her finger to her lips.

“I don’t know,” Neville said hopelessly, clutching the papers he held in his hands.

Finally, approximately forty-three minutes after their scheduled appointment, the door opened to reveal four people sat around an over large table, with serious expressions and thick files. Three of them were immediately recognisable; Healer Langley, looking tired and sad, gazed at Neville through heavily-smudged glasses that badly needed replacing. Montgomery Smith, his family’s solicitor, wore his usual smug expression that Neville suspected he thought made him look dignified. Instead, he looked mean and pinched, but Neville had always been just a tiny bit scared of him regardless.

And, at the end of the table, small and withered and wearing too much lipstick, sat his gran. Augusta Longbottom had never been a large woman, but the past few years had made her appear even smaller, shrunken. He wasn’t fooled; he knew that the small frame before him housed a sharp tongue and significant influence that often left those she encountered cowed and trembling.

Neville squared his shoulders, still clutching the gum wrapper in his fist, and took a seat at the remaining side of the table.

“Mr Longbottom,” Smith drawled, making Neville wince internally. “We appreciate you taking the time to join us, however unnecessarily.”

“I don’t see it as unnecessary for me to be present when it is my parents we are discussing,” Neville replied coolly.

“Yes, well,” Smith allowed, glancing at his files and clearing his throat. “As you are aware. We are here to discuss your parent's lack of progress in their recovery. The hospital feels they have been more than lenient in allowing your parents to be housed in the accidents and maladies ward. It is time for them to be moved –”

“Warehoused,” Neville growled.

“ _Relocated_ ,” continued Mr Smith. “To the long-term permanent care ward, where they can be better cared for and –”

“Where they will be _less expensive_!” Neville yelled, slamming his fist on the table. “Please stop insulting my intelligence, Smith. Let’s be clear about who is being served in this discussion. I won’t agree. I won’t sign off. You know you can’t do anything without my signature. I am their power of attorney. I have been since I became of age. I don’t know why you are wasting our time.”

“Neville,” Augusta pleaded. “Please, consider the draw on your parent's funds. Your inheritance –”

“Is meaningless. Because they are not _dead_ ,” Neville growled. “Where is Marigold? I asked for Marigold Whitiker to be here to testify.”

“Please, this is not a trial,” the Healer scoffed. Neville glared.

“She was going to tell you about my mother’s progress,” he insisted.

“Progress? You mean the songs changing?” Healer Langley replied derisively. “I hardly think that warrants the word _progress_.”

“There’s more,” Neville interjected, aware that he sounded a little bit desperate now. “I found these. Dozens of them. They have writing on them. No one has seen her write, have they?”

“Even still,” the healer continued, practically ignoring Neville’s words and looking to Smith imploringly.

Augusta cleared her throat; the rest of the room fell silent to look at her. “Show me, Neville,” she murmured.

He only hesitated a moment before he passed her a slightly crumpled wrapper from the folder he had placed in front of him; this one was raspberry coloured, the wax on the outside crimped and peeling. Inside, in his mother’s tidy print, was _summer in New York._ Augusta took it gingerly and stared at it for a long moment, eventually exhaling and closing her eyes as though she was in a great deal of pain.

“Is this... these are what she has been giving you all this time?” she whispered.

“Yes,” Neville confirmed quietly. “There are a few sentences. I know they don’t make any sense, but they are words. Actual writing. That has to mean she knows something, even now.” He turned to the other two men and tried to explain. “They’ve been giving me these candy wrappers for years. Randomly. I know it doesn’t make sense, especially since they’ve never been to America, but writing is a big deal when we consider that –”

“It’s not about America,” Augusta interrupted calmly.

“Sorry, Mrs Longbottom?” Smith asked. “I think your grandson may have lost us all here. Do you really want to honour the last will? We’ve discussed the alternatives.”

“It’s not about America,” Augusta insisted, looking only at Neville, tears in her eyes that had sprung from nowhere. He was confused. He had only seen his grandmother cry twice in his life. “You have to understand, my boy. It was an impossible spell. The plan was foolish. No one believed they would really try.” “I don’t understand,” Neville began. “This sentence… all of them, I suspect,” she continued. “They’re about the last place that Frank and Alice Longbottom were seen as competent Aurors. In Lincolnshire, a tiny hamlet where no one would have thought to look. _New York_. They had a flat while they worked undercover for the Order.”

She stood up and held out the wrapper. He took it back hesitantly. “Neville, I should have been listening to her. To you.” Augusta turned to the other men. “You need to go and get my son and his wife,” she said firmly. “Now. Arrange for a day release. If this is true, if this works, they won’t be back in your ward and you’ll have your wish. Smith, order us a Portkey. Neville and I will meet you in the corridor downstairs in an hour to take Frank and Alice to Lincolnshire. I need a cup of tea.”

As the baffled bureaucrats protested behind him, Neville followed his grandmother’s beckoning hand out the door. In the corridor, Luna leapt up with a questioning expression but followed too. Neville could only shrug as he hurried to keep up with Augusta. By the time they had made it down to the atrium, she was practically running. She spun around, nimble as ever, and fixed him with her signature glare.

“Neville, what were you _thinking_ , going in there with that kind of… evidence. Without even telling me!” she burst out.

“What... I don’t… Gran, you were going to put them away in the ward!” he shouted back.

“I…” she paused. “I know. I thought the letter was… nonsense. Or a hoax, at best. I had no idea that… I never thought –” She looked at Neville and Luna for a moment, tears springing out of her eyes again as she sat down heavily on the bench. Luna, being Luna, immediately rushed to her side for a moment before nodding and standing. “I’ll just see about that tea,” she said as she walked away.

“Thank you, dear,” Augusta whispered, patting the seat beside her. “They had a plan, Neville,” she said as he sat down. “A fool plan that they would use an old spell. If they were captured, they would act on it. Save themselves.” “Yeah, but they weren’t captured. They were just... tortured,” Neville gulped.

She nodded to him, barely listening.

“I think we need to take them to their flat,” Augusta whispered. “Their balcony in New York, the tiny little thing that was the last place they lived together.” “What?” Neville asked. “Why?” “It’s a dream. They’re... trapped. In a dream,” she babbled.

“Gran,” Neville protested.

“I know, love. I know.” She patted his hand gently. “One last time, please. Just trust me.”

* * *

They were waiting anxiously on the porch of the farmhouse; for hours, days. Alice couldn’t be sure how long it had actually been. Nor could she be positive when Frank had started pacing. All she knew for certain was that it was getting very irritating.

“Frank,” she said for the millionth time as she rebraided her hair. “Would you please just sit down? Either they come or they don’t. There’s nothing you can do.” 

“Tell me one more time,” he said, moving anxiously back in front of her and setting down his bag.    
  
She sighed, but obliged. After all, she understood what he was feeling.    
  
“If they come, if they bring your mother to the porch, it should be enough to break the spell. For us, this whole scene will just... wash away.”    
  
“And then?”    
  
“And then who knows. You know I have no idea what happens next. No one in recorded history had ever tried the partitioning spell before. We could be reunited with Neville. Or…”    
  
“Or we could die for real this time,” Frank concluded with a sigh.    
  
“And? Is this better?” she said angrily, standing suddenly. “This…  _ nothingness? _ Frank, we both know we can’t go on like this. We should never have –”    
  
“Alice,” he said soothingly. “Alice, I know. That’s not what I meant. It’s fine. Either way… it’s fine.”    
  
She was about to retort, about to respond in anger, but she didn’t have time. The light was too bright, the joy too overpowering, the anger, the torment, the suffering washing away like the daily floods. This time, it felt more real. Permanent. 

Alice Lucille had experienced many moments of pain and sadness in her nineteen years on the natural plane. She had seen real joy and felt immense love. She had endured fear and war, acknowledged hardship, and suffered through the agony of knowing that nothing she did would be enough; she could not save her family. The emotions had been real and powerful. 

None of those moments could even begin to prepare her for the instant when the broken-down farmhouse melted behind her and left her standing on a dingy balcony in the hamlet of New York, Lincolnshire, holding firmly to her husband’s narrow, withered hand, staring at her adult son and seeing him for the first time.  
  
“Neville?” she sobbed.    
  
“M-mum,” he replied.  
  
She collapsed to the ground and fell into darkness. When she awoke in the bright light of a hospital bed, real and tangible, dry and in no pain, she started to cry.    
  
“It’s okay, Mum,” Neville said, gripping her hand tightly and brushing away his own tears. “It’s okay. You’re both back now. You’re safe. I’m sorry… I’m so sorry it took us so long to find you.”    
  
“No, my love,” she insisted in a hoarse, disused whisper. “You saved us.  _ I’m  _ sorry. I’m sorry we weren’t here to love you.”    
  
“You always loved me,” Neville said sheepishly. “Your songs… they were always for me.”    
  
“Yes,” she said, smiling sadly. “They always were.”


End file.
